Ex-Spinners manager Beyeler makes majors

Spinners manager Arnie Beyeler makes his point to the home plate umpire during a 2000 game in Lowell. SUN FILE PHOTO

Arnie Beyeler not only deserved his promotion to the majors as the Red Sox first base coach, it was long overdue.

The former Lowell Spinners manager has paid his dues over and over again in the minor leagues. After reaching Triple-A in the Detroit Tigers system and retiring as a player in 1991, Beyeler spent the next 21 years doing various baseball jobs. He scouted for the Tigers from 1992-96, then spent three years as a hitting coach in the New York Yankees chain.

The Red Sox gave Beyeler his first minor-league managing job in 2000, handing him the reins of the Spinners. I had never heard of Beyeler, much less met him, when I phoned him at his Wisconsin home to introduce myself and interview him for The Sun after the Red Sox announced his hiring.

Following an exchange of pleasantries, Beyeler said: "I've got to be up front with you. I don't like the media much."

I braced myself for a difficult summer covering the Spinners. Dan Duquette was running the Red Sox in those days, and he didn't like anyone in his organization talking to the media without his authorization. It seemed Beyeler would fit right in.

But from the first moment we met face to face on Spinners Media Day in June, we got along famously.

I was doing a lot of Spinners games on the radio back then with Bob Ellis, which meant one or both of us was dealing with Beyeler on a daily basis.

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We both quickly discovered Beyeler was a no-nonsense guy with no tolerance for people who didn't know what they were talking about, and as long as we did our jobs as professionally as he was doing his, he was as cooperative and frank as any manager I've ever dealt with, majors or minors.

He expected just as much professionalism from his players, most of them first-year pros and teenagers, introducing himself to them with his "millionaires" speech.

"If you can play five years in the big leagues, you'll be set for life," Beyeler told them. "You're all here for a reason, and the reason is that you can all play. I don't have a lot of rules, and I'm not a yeller or a screamer. But I expect you to respect the game, play the game hard, and play the game right. Come out and give 100 percent every day because there are a million guys out there who would love to be where you are right now.

"So if you don't want to be a millionaire, go somewhere else and punch a clock."

Beyeler didn't have a lot of talent to work with. Duquette, the GM, and CEO John Harrington were devoting nearly every penny they could muster to win a World Series before the Yawkey Trust sold the team, and the farm system had become neglected.

Shawn Smith, the Spinners GM, dubbed first baseman Dustin Brisson, second baseman Raul Nieves, shortstop Freddy Sanchez, and third baseman John Hattig "The $1,000 Infield," a tongue-in-cheek reference to the Philadelphia Athletics' fabled "$100,000 Infield" of Eddie Collins, Home Run Baker, Jack Barry, and Stuffy McInnis that won four pennants and two World Series from 1910-14, because paltry $1,000 bonuses were what Lowell's infielders had received to sign with the Red Sox.

But Beyeler managed that team to a 41-34 record, the first winning season in the Spinners' five-year history.

Only four players on that Lowell team would ever make it to the majors.

But one of them, Freddy Sanchez, would become a millionaire and win an NL batting title while playing on two World Championship teams in San Francisco.

Beyeler's 2001 Spinners team was even weaker. The highest drafted pitcher on the team at the start of the season was a 12th-round pick. Lowell pitching coach Dave Tomlin looked at what he had and predicted: "We aren't going to win 15 games this year."

But Beyeler and Tomlin got that team to overachieve and finish with a 33-43 record, and while none of those pitchers ever reached the majors, several of them did improve enough to pitch several seasons in the minors. Only two players, third baseman Kevin Youkilis -- another cheap signing and future millionaire -- and late-arriving first-round pick left-hander Phil Dumatrait played in the majors.

Beyeler and the Red Sox parted ways after the club was sold following the 2002 season. But after managing for three years in the Texas Rangers organization and spending another as a minor-league pitching coach for the San Diego Padres, Beyeler returned to the Red Sox in 2007.

He managed Class AA Portland for four years and Class AAA Pawtucket for two, guiding the PawSox to two first-place finishes and their first International League Governors Cup championship since 1984 this past summer. Through all those years Beyeler and I stayed in contact.

Bob Ellis and I had lunch with Beyeler a few days before the baseball season ended.

We expressed our hopes that the Red Sox, if they were serious about taking a step back and retrenching, would give him a chance at a major-league job since he had helped develop many of the young players who were going to be on the roster in 2013.

Beyeler, now 48, and I have been exchanging voice mails since the Red Sox promoted him, and he said he was "shocked" to get the job.

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